Ukraine is looking for various ways to free its citizens from Russian captivity, but the Russian Federation is doing everything it can to prevent it.
During the full-scale war, Ukraine freed 3,135 people from Russian captivity, about a third of whom were registered as missing. This was announced by the representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Petro Yatsenko, at a media meeting in Vienna, reports Ukrinform.
“Before February 24, 2022, the beginning of the mass invasion of the Russian Federation, we officially registered about 300 prisoners of war and missing in action and at that time it seemed to us that it was a very large number the number of missing persons, as well as prisoners of war, increased dramatically.” , – said Yatsenko.
The coordination headquarters has been operating since March 2022, and since then there have been 51 prisoner exchanges.
“3,135 people were released from captivity in Russia, among them 147 civilians. I emphasize that approximately one third of this total number is registered as missing,” said Yatsenko.
He emphasized that Ukraine is looking for various ways to free our people from Russian captivity, but the Russian Federation is doing everything to prevent it.
“Unlike the Russian Federation, we have created a special project for family members of Russians who are looking for their relatives of the missing in Ukraine obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular, the provisions of the Third Geneva Convention regarding the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” said a Coordhead representative.
Ukraine has called on the Russian Federation to create the same conditions for Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian captives held in Russian prisons or in temporarily occupied territories, but Russia has not shared any information about those prisoners in Ukraine, although Ukraine, as a rule-of-law state, handed over to the Russian Federation the complete list of Russian prisoners of war.
“And a particular problem in the negotiations concerns the return of Ukrainian civilians. Because civilians, by definition, are not prisoners of war and cannot be exchanged for prisoners of war. In general, Russia has no basis to illegally remove Ukrainian civilians. But we know that there are about 1,600 civilians in de facto Russian captivity, that is, people who do not have any military position,” added the representative of Coordhead.
Let’s remember that the Pope said he was ready to facilitate the exchange of prisoners.
Source: korrespondent
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